Well, I had to call it something.

Once again, I have no idea what to write. Or rather, I have a ton of ideas but none of them will sit still long enough for me to write them down, so I am, alas, adrift.

I know, I’ll talk about Nietzsche.

I’ve been rereading my Portable Nietzsche for the n+1nth time. I love that long dead crazy son of a bitch. Some of what he said was brilliant, some of it was barely more than articulate gibberish, and a lot of it lay somewhere in between.

But all of it carries this magnificence to it that I find irresistible. Even his craziest scribblings radiate a powerful aura of confidence and fearless uniqueness, the courage of the iconoclast, and I love him for it. His work is ferociously independent and carries with it the impression of a emperor of thought.

He was, of course, anything but regal in reality. He was a frail, stooped, mild fellow who was nearly blind. He lived in a tiny freezing garret with a stove that did not work, and he suffered from a whole host of ailments, such as digestion issues, a weak heart, and above all insomnia, for which he took a bewildering assortment of what passed for medicines back then.

He took all his meals at the commissary of the small German university where he worked, and people found him to be soft spoken, slow moving, and so incredibly polite it was almost painful. When conversation was required, he spoke of bland inoffensive things like the weather, but for the most part, he kept to himself.

Most of the time, he was alone in his garret. He spent most of his days tormented by his various illnessed and wracked with pain. Everything he wrote, he wrote in those precious hours when his illnesses have him peace.

And that, I think, is the key to understanding Nietzsche. I have known the endorphin mania that comes from being suddenly free from pain after a long bout of suffering, and it is amazing. The pain you suffered had caused your body to release tons and tons of endorphins (from the planet Endor) and when the pain stop, the endorphins are still there, so you are high as a kite and feel like the universe is full of boundless opportunities and you can do anything.

Like all such highs, it’s fun but also frightening because part of your mind knows that things are getting out of control and you are, metaphorically speaking, strapped to the front of a speeding locomotive.

And this manic state is when Nietzsche wrote! That explains all the arrogance and self-confidence and grandiose language. He was tripping balls on endorphins the whole time! He might as well have written after a dozen rails of cocaine.

One thing I noticed this time through the biography section of the book that I hadn’t noticed before was that Nietzsche and I have something in common : we both write it then forget it. No editing. Admittedly, he had the excuse that he was writing with quill and ink in dim light and had such poor eyesight that he could barely read what he’d written, whereas I am writing on a computer in a way that makes editing something the easiest it has ever been, but still.

Makes me wonder what his penmanship was like.

The other thing that Nietzsche and I have in common is writing from a place of deep isolation. My isolation is nowhere as profound as his was, but there is real isolation and there is internal isolation, and I have a poisonously large dose of the latter. I have been internally isolated for almost my entire life. It’s very hard for anyone to truly reach me. Sometimes I wonder if even the heat and power of true love could ever warm this lonely planet of mine.

And so I think we both lived mostly inside our own heads, in the world of words and ideas and thoughts, and that with the both of us, there is a deep urge to use our words to write our name on the sky in flaming letters of blood and iron in order to say to the world “I am alive and a powerful force to be reckoned with! I will force you to DEAL WITH ME!”

Maybe all iconoclasts are really just acting out. Who knows.

Of course, my work isn’t like his because I am not writing while high as fuck and I am not quite as cut off from the human sphere as he was. But I have seriously considered doing my own Zarathustra project. A novel where a central character expresses and encounters my deep philosophy.

Who knows. writing it might be a profound form of therapy. In a novel, you can really let your imagination run wild. Whatever images, characters, themes, concepts, or anything else you need, you can create.

Make it a philosophical novel, that is one created expressly to be metaphorical, imagistic, and as surreal as it needs to be, and the door is open even wider.

I even have a protagonist in mind ; the Space Angel, an alien creature who comes to Earth and has to figure out what this thing called a “human being” is all about. She is a very caring and gentle kind of alien (hence the Angel part) and has the power to travel anywhere on Earth in an eyeblink (she crossed between stars just to get here) and she is immortal and free from the need to eat, mate, or so on.

She is a being of pure thought and emotion (er, energy) , and she is going to encounter humanity. I almost feel sorry for her.

Look for her in this space. If I ever do my Zarathustra, it will be here.

Because honestly, who would buy that kind of thing? Certainly not traditional publishers.

Anyhow, I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.